Kids are lovers of toys worldwide that’s why these Toy Museum were created for kids.
If you are looking for where to take your kids these weekends then visit any of these Toy museum listed below but before then what’s a Toy Museum ?
Toy Museum ?
A toy museum is a museum for toys. They typically showcase toys from a particular culture or period.
These are distinct from children’s museums, which are museums for children, and are often interactive – toy museums may be aimed at children or adults, and may have interactive exhibits or be exclusively for display.
Best 15 Toy Museum / Museum Of Toys To Visit
• Pollock’s Toy Museum
Pollock’s Toy Museum is a small museum in London, England. The museum was started in 1956 in a single attic room at 44 Monmouth Street, near Covent Garden.
As the enterprise flourished, other rooms were taken over for the museum and the ground floor became a toyshop.
By 1969 the collection had outgrown the Monmouth Street premises and Pollock’s Toy Museum moved to 1 Scala Street, with a museum shop on the ground floor to contribute to its support.
The museum continues today to be run by the grandson of the founder Marguerite Fawdry.
• Brighton Toy and Model Museum
Brighton Toy and Model Museum (sometimes referred to as Brighton Toy Museum) is an independent toy museum situated in Brighton, East Sussex (registered charity no. 1001560).
Its collection focuses on toys and models produced in the UK and Europe up until the mid-Twentieth Century, and occupies four thousand square feet of floor space within four of the early Victorian arches supporting the forecourt of Brighton railway station.
Founded in 1991, the museum holds over ten thousand toys and models, including model train collections, puppets, Corgi, Dinky, Budgie Toys, construction toys and radio-controlled aircraft.
• Museum of Childhood
The Museum of Childhood is a museum which houses a collection of children’s toys and playthings, situated on the Royal Mile, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
It was the first museum in the world to specialize in the history of childhood.
• Ilkley Toy Museum
Ilkley Toy Museum in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, houses a private collection of toys dating from 350 BC to modern times, and is open to the public, schools, and groups.
• Dorset Teddy Bear Museum
The Dorset Teddy Bear Museum is a teddy bear museum in Dorchester, Dorset, southern England.
The museum includes Teddy Bear House and displays antique and other teddy bears. Bears on display include Paddington Bear, Rupert Bear, and Winnie the Pooh.
The earliest bear dates from 1906 and there are also life-sized bears.
• Hove Museum and Art Gallery
Hove Museum and Art Gallery is a municipally-owned museum in the town of Hove, which is part of the larger city of Brighton and Hove in the South East of England.
The museum is part of “Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton and Hove”, and admission is free.
Opened in 1927 by the Hove Corporation, the museum is located in a late 19th-century villa originally known as Brooker Hall.
The museum features a toy gallery that includes a significant collection of dolls, teddy bears, mechanical toys, toy trains, dollhouses, rocking horses and tricycles.
Another focus is contemporary crafts and fine art. The museum also includes local history displays, and a collection of early cinema artifacts from the 1890s and 1900s.
• Lynton Toy Museum
Lynton Toy Museum is located in Lynton, one of the two unique and picturesque twin villages of Lynton and Lynmouth.
The Toy Museum houses a great display of toys, games and action figures ranging from the 1960s to 1980s and is the result of many years collecting by the owners, Tony and Lorraine Bennett.
• Ore Mountain Toy Museum
The Ore Mountain Toy Museum is an internationally known museum of Ore Mountain toys and Ore Mountain folk art.
It was opened in 1953 in Seiffen. In 1973 it was joined by the Ore Mountains Open-Air Museum, a folk art and local historic museum with 14 houses typical of the Ore Mountains before 1900 on the edge of the toy village.
• National Toy Hall of Fame
The National Toy Hall of Fame is a U.S. hall of fame that recognizes the contributions of toys and games that have sustained their popularity for many years.
Criteria for induction include: icon status (the toy is widely recognized, respected, and remembered); longevity (more than a passing fad); discovery (fosters learning, creativity, or discovery); and innovation (profoundly changed play or toy design).
Established in 1998 under the direction of Ed Sobey, it was originally housed at A. C. Gilbert’s Discovery Village in Salem, Oregon, United States, but was moved to the Strong National Museum of Play (now The Strong) in Rochester, New York, in 2002 after it outgrew its original home.
• National Farm Toy Museum
The National Farm Toy Museum is a museum located in Dyersville, Iowa, that specializes in preserving and displaying scale models, replicas, and toys based on farm equipment.
The initial idea of the museum came from the founders of the Ertl Company, Dave Bell and Claire Scheibe.
• Suomenlinna Toy Museum
The Suomenlinna Toy Museum presents a private collection of old toys, dating from the 1830’s until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The collection includes antique and vintage toys; dolls, tin toys, teddy bears, doll’s houses and other pensioners of the toy world.
• Strong National Museum of Play
The Strong National Museum of Play (known as just The Strong Museum or simply the Strong) is part of The Strong in Rochester, New York, United States.
Established in 1969 and based initially on the personal collection of Rochester native Margaret Woodbury Strong, the Museum opened to the public in 1982, after several years of planning, cataloguing, and exhibition development for the Museum’s new building in downtown Rochester.
For at least fifteen years after its opened, the mission of the Museum was to interpret the social and cultural history of average Americans between 1830 and 1940, under the direction of H.J. Swinney and William T. Alderson.
Mrs. Strong’s collections of dolls and toys, American and European decorative arts, prints, paintings, Japanese crafts, and advertising ephemera provided a firm foundation for this mission, and were supplemented with collections purchased and donated to more fully support the Museum’s early mission.
The Museum received considerable local and national publicity and support and substantial financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Exhibitions and Public Programs division.
• Mechelen Toy Museum
The Mechelen Toy Museum, situated in the Nekkerspoel hamlet in Mechelen, Belgium, is a museum containing a unique collection of past and contemporary toys on a total surface of 7,000 m2.
The museum was founded in April 1982, and since 1998 it is a recognized museum.
• Tartu Toy Museum
Tartu Toy Museum is the biggest toy museum in the Baltic States, located in Tartu, Estonia.
It displays over 5000 toys from its vast collection and has several interactive toys for the visitors to try out, as well as a playroom for children.
In 2005 the film puppets exhibition was opened in the courtyard house, exhibiting film puppets made in Estonia over the last 50 years, props and sketches of animated movies.
• İstanbul Toy Museum
The İstanbul Toy Museum is a toy museum located in the Göztepe neighbourhood of Kadıköy district in İstanbul, Turkey.
The museum was founded by the Turkish poet and novelist, Sunay Akın, in 2005.
The museum opened on April 23, a national holiday in Turkey, National Sovereignty and Children’s Day.
Currently, the museum has on display 4,000 toys and miniatures from Turkey and abroad; many of the exhibits are antiques, some of which date back nearly 200 years.
The first floor of the museum is the site of the Eyüp Toy Shop, a famous toy shop that closed down in the 1950s.
In 2012, the museum was nominated and shortlisted for the annual European Museum Academy Children’s Museum Award.
• National Museum of Toys
The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, formerly known as the Kansas City Toy and Miniature Museum, is located on the campus of the University of Missouri Kansas City.
(Bequeathed to the University in the 1960s, the home was originally designed for physician Herbert Tureman in 1906 by noted architect John McKecknie and completed by 1911.)
Opened in 1982, the museum today boasts the world’s largest collection of fine-scale miniatures and one of the nation’s largest collections of antique toys on public display.
The above list are the best toy museums for kids near me to visit today.
